


Win or Lose

by LinearA



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Board Games, Colors Red & Blue, Established Relationship, F/M, Fancy Space Chess, FinnRose Week 2019, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, If you're a rebel hero and you fuck by god you've fucked on that Dejarik table, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 11:07:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19424725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinearA/pseuds/LinearA
Summary: It could get boring, the long stretches of downtime as they flee the First Order and lie low.  But Finn has been a Stormtrooper; he knows about boredom, and he has a solution: his favorite board game.  He has some trouble explaining it to Rose, though.Red against blue, and may the best player win.





	Win or Lose

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Finnrose Week 2019. The prompt was "Colors Red & Blue."

He can't even remember how many times he's sat on this ship, now, running from some near-miss with death. It's getting to be boring. Especially given how long their trip is going to be. It's nice it's not as crowded this time as it had been when they fled Crait, nice that Rose is healthy and well, but lying low for this long is going to be painfully boring.

Finn feels proud of himself as he opens the board on top of the Dejarik table, and the pieces glow to life. So much of the time, she's the one to explain things to him, to teach him new and delightful things. But if there's one thing Stormtroopers know about, it's boredom. This is his favorite way to fight it, and while Rey had been mind-tricking the dealer into giving them supplies, he'd slipped the Xis-xas board into their bag.

"It's _like_ Dejarik. But I like it better." He lines up the corners of the board so the square is exactly at the center of the circular table.

"Why?" Rose asks, looking curiously down at the ranged pieces.

"Well, the rules are simpler. It's got troopers in it." He points to the front ranks, the rows of smooth helmets. "And Dejarik pieces are ugly. Look how nice these are." Xis-xas pieces don't move; you could play it with physical tokens if you had to, if your memory was good enough to remember which pieces were crowned and which were wounded. But the shining red and blue lights, the clean shapes, the way the crowned pieces sparkle — it had always been a pleasure to him, especially in the dull ugliness of a dark troop hold. "Do you want to be red or blue?"

She wants to be blue, and she listens attentively as he explains the rules. The first round, he smashes her. Just absolutely creams her. 

"You can't be afraid of losing pieces," he tells her, as he presses the button to reset the game. "You have to be willing to make sacrifices." 

She nods, but three turns later, she's doing it again. He rubs his forehead.

"No, see — if you'd let me take that trooper, your captain could have wounded mine. Or you could have used your wing ship to take my captain, but then your wing ship would be in danger from my flagship. See?" He shuttles the pieces rapidly, showing her the possible moves. "You've saved that trooper, but now my captain's ready to wound your wing ship."

"But I've saved the trooper."

"But the troopers don't matter as much. That's why you have so many. They're slower and they're much harder to crown. Do you want to start over?"

She lets him press the reset, but she frowns. "Just because they're slower, it shouldn't mean they matter less. It should be up to the stronger pieces to protect them."

"But the point of the game is to protect your base and crown your flagship, so you can win the war. You have to make sacrifices, to win the war."

"Who gave me the right to sacrifice them, though?" she insists, her chin rising in a familiar way, and he thinks he sees the problem.

'They're not troopers like I was," he assures her, though of course the helmets look very much like his. "They're volunteers. They know they have a part to play, and they're ready to play it."

"Okay." She frowns down at the board.

She plays more slowly this time, but he's astonished at how much harder she is to beat this time. She's ruthless; she fights him tooth and nail and he beats her by a single crowned piece, his base wounded and all his wing ships gone. He grins, ready to congratulate her; he had to search long and hard as a Stormtrooper to find an opponent who could make playing that fun for him, and it's only her second game. But she's looking sadly down at the board. "We lost,' she says in a small voice. "I lost them all, for nothing."

"Rose," he says. "They're just pieces. Just holograms on the board. You didn't actually hurt anybody."

"I know that." She sounds offended but her face is still grey with sadness, and she rubs her bare arms as if she were cold, when the heat in the ship is the whole reason she stripped down to her dark-red undershirt in the first place.

"We don't have to play this. Not if you don't like it." He shuts off the board. It's not like he paid for it. Maybe Poe will want to play, if he can find the time.

"No!" She puts her hand on the board before he can fold it up. "I just don't understand. You like this game, but — isn't it all about killing people like you?"

He sits back, and Rose turns the board back on. The rows and rows of blue and red trooper helmets reappear.

"It is and it isn't," he says, after a minute. "I mean, I know that those pieces wouldn't look like that if somebody hadn't thought of troopers as... kind of disposable. But that's not the _game._ The game is the pieces and what they do, right? It's abstract. You could call them something else. The pieces could all be — different particles, or animals, or random shapes, and the game would work just the same." He wishes he could reprogram the board. Maybe Rose can.

"And you just think about it abstractly, when you play?" The color is coming back into her face, and there's a brightening curiosity in her voice. "That's what makes it fun?"

"Yeah! It's like — forces. Vectors. Like a puzzle, except we make the puzzle harder for each other."

She stares at the board, and then makes a long, considering, pleased sound. "Let's play again."

She plays differently this time. He's proud of thinking of the word "vector;" he can practically feel the push and pull from her side of the board as she draws him in, corners him, advances on him, is drawn in by him, gives way to his advance. The game lasts longer this time, and though he still wins, he wins with just as few pieces left on the board as he had last time, and she has considerably more. "Look at that," he says proudly, waving his hand over the sparkling landscape of red and blue. "Isn't it pretty?"

He wishes he knew more words for things he liked to look at than _pretty._ He knows they _exist;_ he understands them when he hears or reads them. But they don't come easily to his mouth when he wants them. They shape of Rose's arm, for example; it gives him a warm, pleased feeling to look at it. But not for the same reason as looking at the glowing, glittering board does, and not for the same reason as looking at her shiny hair. If Poe or the General were in his shoes they'd have the words for the difference, right away.

She looks at the board. "I suppose," she says doubtfully. "I think you're better at looking at it abstractly than I am. I just keep going back to the symbolism."

What possesses him? The memory, maybe, of senior officers who never played Xis-xas or smiled, bent feverishly over the board with diabolical grins. "Maybe if you were a little distracted... we could... make it interesting."

"Make it interesting?"

"Every time I take a piece of yours, you have to kiss me, and every time you take one of mine, I have to kiss you."

"...have...to?" she asks, her voice breaking. He looks at her crumpled face in distress, not understanding what's wrong until she whisperingly clarifies. "You don't want to?"

"No! No, like... it's a game. We both want to be playing. We have to both want to play, or there isn't any game. There just... have to be rules, right? Or else it's not a game." He doesn't understand it, why she never seems sure he wants her. He doesn't know how to tell her that he does, he definitely does, except to tell her and tell her again whenever she seems to doubt it, so that's what he does.

She swallows. "Maybe I don't understand this version of the game, then."

"Don't worry," he smirks. "I think you'll catch on fast."

It changes the strategy, of course. He sends a trooper out far and fast, so Rose has no choice but to take him, and walks around the board to lean her back, his hand on the nape of her neck, and kiss her hard and slow. When he settles himself back in place, she's looking back and forth between him and the board, mouth pursed in concentration.

Yeah, this is going to be interesting.

He sends his wing ship out on his next move, wreaking such wanton havoc on her side of the board that after three turns she just stays in his lap, reaching out to move her pieces from his side of the board. He kisses her shoulder as she does it, and she pushes his head away. "No cheating," she says firmly.

Then she crowns a piece. "What's the rule for that?"

"Rule?" he asks blankly.

"If you kiss me when I take a piece, what happens when I crown a piece?"

"I kiss you again?"

"No," she says firmly. "It needs to be different. Like, every time I play my crowned piece, I get to touch you however I want."

"How about every time you play your crowned piece, _I_ get to touch you however _I_ want?" She frowns, and he runs his knuckle softly up the underside of her arm. "Makes it more of a challenge."

"Fine." So when she uses her crowned captain to knock out a wing ship and two troopers, he finds himself with his hand under her shirt, teasing her nipples with his thumbs, and owing her three kisses. He has some idea he'll make them quick, but as long as he's kissing her she can't remind him that he's supposed to have stopped touching her when her turn ended, so the kisses last and last and last, until she's moaning into his mouth.

"What do I get when I win?" he asks, when he's finally withdrawn his hands and surrendered her mouth.

"Oh," she says, gasping a little, and rubbing distractingly against the hard-on in his pants, "we'll figure something out."

Of course, when _he_ goes to play his crowned commander, her hand brushes up and down his cock in teasing little strokes and if he hadn't planned his move in advance, he'd never be able to execute it. _Two more turns._ Two more turns, and then he has her. And he's distracting her, too; he drags his fingers along the seam in her pants, and she gasps and grinds her hips down and makes a quick, misguided move that plays right into his hands. So to speak.

He sweeps up her last wing ship and her crowned captain at a stroke, and then enjoys the slightly petulant flavor of her kisses. When she nips his lip on the last one, he grins at her, and wraps his arm a little higher around her waist. You _could_ play Xis-xas with physical tokens, but then he'd have had to move them before he laid her down on the board and — 

She takes his base. With a trooper.

"This is a fun game." He gawps at the board. How did she do that? Why didn't he notice? "I think I like it." Her finger runs down his nose and gently closes his mouth. "So, what do I win?"

He clears his throat, and looks up at her. She's smiling a shy, close-mouthed smile. Finn tightens his grip on her, pulls her right up against him. Her breasts are right there, to kiss or nuzzle, but — "You tell me."

She taps her finger on his chin, considering. "I want you fingers, and your mouth," she says, decisively. "And then you're going to fuck me on this table. Deal?"

"Will you take off your shirt?" She can even keep the breast band on; he just... really likes to see her move as he moves her.

She pouts a little, but her hands go to the hem of her sleeveless shirt, and he is still maybe a little miffed that she beat him and he didn't even see it coming, but he also has to admit he doesn't really feel like he's _losing_ right now, not even when she drags his shirt off him right afterwards.

He sets her on the table and tugs her pants and underwear right off, and balls them up on the deck to protect his knees. "You're sure nobody's going to come in?"

"Everyone's on sleep shift except us and Rey and Chewie," she assures him. "And you know what kind of emergency it would take for either of those stubborn moofs to come ask someone else for help?"

She has a point. And he had assumed that nobody would bother them when they were playing Xis-xas, that that was time just for him and Rose, so it's fair to keep assuming that, as he moves her thighs to make room for himself between them. He pets her wet lips apart with his fingers. See, this is another place where he needs a better word, a word to explain exactly how and why he could look at this all day. But he'll have to settle for what he can find. "Aren't you pretty?" he sighs, before he puts his mouth to the prettiest spot.

She sighs, and shifts her legs, and he leans in, putting one leg over his back. Her hands rub the back of his neck and stroke the knots in his hair. Finn licks at her steadily, and she rubs herself against his mouth; he puts his fingers in her like she asked, and she moans, her lightly-calloused heel pressing into his back. She's so slick; touching her, licking her, feeling her against his tongue, is such a deep tactile pleasure, and she sounds so pleased. He reaches down to stroke his cock a little, clumsily, and wonders how many games in a row he could lose on purpose before she caught wise.

He works her with his fingers and makes his licks shorter, faster, focused on her clit. He loves that sound she makes when he really gets her going, almost like she's hiccuping with pleasure. And she want him to fuck her, and she took her shirt off. It's not like they don't do this in bed, during their sleep shift. But this feels different. She beat him! When did she get so sly?

She wriggles like a fish, thighs squeezing his ears, pussy tight around his fingers, and he knows how good that feels when he's inside her. He keeps his tongue tight on her until she moans and _squeaks_ and moans again. "Finn, Finn; I want you to fuck me, Finn — "

He jumps up, yanking down his pants and giving his impatient cock an encouraging tug. _Almost, almost, any minute now; gonna feel real good._ If they made sweets that looked like her tits, nobody would eat any other treat; he's sure of it. The Dejarik table is a little bit the wrong height; he puts his hands on her hips and pulls her a little off, a little towards him, leaning himself forward.

He looks at her black eyes, sweet as she always is, even when she's a sly little demon who beat him on the fourth game she ever played. "Finn?"

He presses himself into her. It would feel good enough by itself, sliding into her, soft and hot, but the way her body jolts with his, the way her hands clench and her mouth opens, make his eyes dim and his voice hoarse. "Rose."

He fucks her firmly, the way she's shown him she likes it. His eyes flicker back and forth between the soft bounce of her breasts and the pink oval of her open mouth, but when he feels her getting close, he leans in, eyes on hers, hands running up around her hips and digging in to her soft waist, as if somebody might come and try to take her away from him, tell him he's not allowed to have anything this good, this pretty, this _beautiful_ — that's the word for this, for watching Rose come as he fucks her.

And maybe he lost his favorite game to a brand new player, but when her hands, fine and clever and marked with engine oil, pull at his arms and keep pulling, holding on as he comes, twitching and gasping— if he is here, feeling this, he must be winning. And maybe he was once a trooper, who didn't matter, who was disposable, but if Rose cries his name like that, if she wants him like this and holds him like this, then now he is something different, something better and luckier and much more important, because Rose loves him.


End file.
